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So, the Americans are now getting serious about putting weapons in space. Is nowhere sacred; is nowhere safe from the militant paranoia of the ignorant American race? It seems unbelievable that Space exploration has been reduced to virtually nothing in modern times – due to expense, lack of interest, and a lack of any real belief that we have the technology to actually achieve anything tangible at the present moment. Yet, when you look at it, the challenge of creating a global network of space weapons is surely as difficult as it would be to establish a colony on the moon for instance? It seems that Americans are only happy to fund far-fetched schemes when the outcome is even more expensive and destructive weaponry than has ever been created before - America would be happy to put a building on the moon, but only if that building is a military outpost. The insanity of America’s desire to put weapons in space is best summed up by the sheer cost of the venture. A figure of $130 billion has been quoted as the cost of America’s missile defence system, and a space missile system would be inordinately more expensive to implement. For a country that justifies it’s ridiculous arms spending on its need to protect it’s civilians, it does not seem to realise that spending the majority of public money year after year on the military has led to a harsh degradation of the quality of life for the American public. If the funding of outrageous arms systems – protection against an invisible enemy – had been spent wisely American citizens could instead benefit from a Public health service, and a lot more American lives would be protected from real dangers.

It is the US Air Force that is now pushing the agenda for Space Weapons to be implemented, advising that space must be ‘secured’ in order to protect the nation. Well who better to appeal to than George Bush? His one brain cell is busy thinking about Iraq and wondering why all those people keep dying violent deaths, they must be the most ungrateful nation America has ever ‘liberated’. But even if Bush’s one malfunctioning brain cell addressed the problem - and someone read out the proposal replacing any complicated words with monkey noises - Bush would still be the best President to ask. After all this is the man that is happily spending money that America does not have, and cannot afford, funding his personal ‘War on Terror’, something as indefinable and limitless as Bush’s stupidity.

In January 2001, a commission led by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the newly nominated defense secretary, recommended that the military should “ensure that the president will have the option to deploy weapons in space.” If George Bush was falling from a plane from 10,000 feet, his military – the ones being forced to kill and be killed in the futile war in Iraq – should ensure he does not even have the option of deploying a parachute. It was back in 2002 that Bush withdrew from a 30-year-old Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which banned space-based weapons; and the US Air Force have understood this as a sign that they can now start to address the possibilities of a space weapons program. Gen. Lance Lord (surely the surname is some kind of prophetic joke?) leads the Air Force Space Command and in a recent report to congress stated: ‘Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.’ This comment reminds me of Apocalypse Now, one of the greatest indictments of American foreign policy, and the scene where Lieutenant Kilgore’s helicopter lands during a battle and a skull and crossbones is marked on the front above the text ‘Death from Above’. If three words could sum up the contribution of America to the world since 1940 (‘the American way of fighting’) it would be these three. From the first and only military use of Nuclear Bombs in Japan, the saturation Napalm bombing of Vietnam, the first Gulf War, the Kosovo War, and the War in Afghanistan through to the present war in Iraq, ‘Death from Above’ has been the staple diet of American Foreign policy. Air Force doctrine defines space superiority as “freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack” in space; but in reality it is simply the ultimate reckoning of ‘Death from Above’.

Some information taken from:

Air Force Seeks Bush’s Approval for Space Weapons Programs By TIM WEINER

Published: May 18, 2005